One year ago, on just such a misty day as this, I stepped off the plane onto Irish soil for the first time and my eyes first encountered the elegant Scots pine, the graceful snowdrop, the fierce gorse bush.
I was filled with such ambition, adventure, expectation...I was approaching my upcoming experiences almost like a research project - I was going to learn darn-dungit! Learn communication and conflict resolution skills, learn more about my own gifts, interests, spirituality, gathering information to help me with my vocational discernment.
Never would I have imagined that I would still be here a year later - and at a monastery no less! I did not expect to end up living at Holy Hill for 3 months (much less 7!). I did not expect to end up doing such huge spiritual discernment. I was interested in practical discernment!
And yet, here I am. Still not knowing where life will take me next, but so much more sure of who I want to be, both apprehensive and excited to see how this journey will unfold...
God is impossible to predict.
Monday, February 6, 2012
Saturday, February 4, 2012
risking winter
After what has been (apparently) an unseasonably warm winter in Ireland (especially compared with the previous two years!), and all sorts of exclamations and excited over the first noticeable signs of spring (lambs!, noisy birds!1 blooming snowdrops, crocuses, daffodils!), we have just experienced the three coldest days of the season - the coldest since I left 2 newly fallen feet of snow in Boston a year ago! It was below freezing in the mornings, and the hard frost left the grass white and crunchy all day long in most places. The rocks in the courtyard fountain are coated with a thick layer of clear ice. The skies have been sunny and cloudless. And the sunrises have been incredible. Here's the second draft of a poem inspired by the weather:
Risking winter
Our winters do not want
to let us go.
If the spring comes
before its time
it opens itself,
boldly vulnerable,
to winter's clinging
claws.
but that is the risk we take
when we let our passionate God
love us into life.
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